Jimmy Horn Jr. declares Colorado as America's Team

If the Dallas Cowboys are America’s Team in the NFL, could Colorado be the college football equivalent? Buffaloes receiver Jimmy Horn Jr. believes so.

Led by first-year coach Deion Sanders, Colorado entered the year with an almost completely new roster as only 10 scholarship players returned from last season’s squad. Not many expected that strategy to pay off, but it did as the Buffaloes pulled off a 45-42 upset of No. 17 TCU on Saturday to grab the country’s attention.

Many have jumped on the bandwagon following the win, but there’s also a number of people not quite ready to buy into the hype. No matter which side you stand on, Horn is embracing the newfound interest in what is taking place in Boulder.

“How can I say it? We poppin’ right now. I feel like we America’s Team, but there’s still doubters that wanna see us fail,” the receiver said. “You’ve got people out there that was like ‘I told you so’ if we was to lose. We not losing. But if we were to lose, you’d have people out there like ‘I told you.’ They might say that game was luck or something but really that’s all skill. We’ve been doing this all camp.”

Buffaloes quarterback Shedeur Sanders broke a school record with 510 yards passing and four touchdowns in Saturday’s win. Four different Colorado players finished the contest with more than 100 yards receiving, including Horn who totaled 11 catches for 117 yards and a touchdown.

Fellow receiver Xavier Weaver was also part of that group with six catches for 118 yards. He was asked whether he views Colorado as America’s Team as well, giving a similar response to Horn as he talked bout proving the haters wrong.

“I’ve been seeing a lot of CU on social media lately,” he said. “That’s because we’ve proved to them what they didn’t know we could do. So it’s kind of shocking to them. Now they want to bring us up and stuff, but we knew what we had. We knew what we could do. We just know what we got.”

That’s a lot of big talk from the Buffaloes after just one win. Time will tell whether they can continue to back it up, but for now, it’s clear they’re one of the biggest stories in college football and for good reason.

Colorado will next face Nebraska at noon ET on Saturday in Boulder.